Managing the Size of Your Mailbox

About Mailbox Size

A full mailbox can affect the speed at which Cisco Unity processes your messages. Your Cisco Unity administrator sets the storage limits for your mailbox, which can prevent you from sending and receiving messages when you exceed the limits. When you log on, Cisco Unity notifies you when your mailbox is:

•Almost full.

•Full and you can no longer send new messages.

•Full and you can no longer send or receive new messages.

(System broadcast messages are not included in the total size of your mailbox.)

Reasons Why Your Mailbox May Fill Up Quickly

If you feel that your Cisco Unity mailbox fills up more quickly than you expect, consider the following reasons why this may happen:

A Message-Retention Policy May Not Be Enforced

By default, Cisco Unity does not automatically delete messages once they reach a certain age. This means that unless your Cisco Unity administrator set up Cisco Unity to enforce a message-retention policy, you are responsible for managing your mailbox size by periodically reviewing your saved messages and deleting them permanently.

If Cisco Unity is set up to enforce a message-retention policy, ask your Cisco Unity administrator how long Cisco Unity stores your messages before permanently deleting them. Cisco Unity does not indicate when a message-retention policy is enforced, nor does it warn you before messages are permanently deleted as a result of such a policy.

Total Message Size Includes Original When Messages Are Forwarded

You may receive messages that have been forwarded many times over, which increases message size. The original message plus all recorded and written introductions that were added during forwarding equal the total message size. As a result, your mailbox can exceed its limit, even though you may have relatively few messages stored in it.